


Two Lists

by withcoffeespoons



Series: Nixa Shepard [4]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Colonist (Mass Effect), Gen, Mindoir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 21:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10625790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withcoffeespoons/pseuds/withcoffeespoons
Summary: The colony had been rebuilt, sure. But you couldn’t rebuild people.





	

Mindoir was just a memory, now.

She had been sixteen, all freckles and limbs, bronze skin in the sun and toes in the sand. The waves on the beach were different from the brackish water of the oyster farm, but she spent as much time down on the beach as she did working the estuary.

The colony saw more sunny days than not, and her complexion was as much the influence of the sun as it was inheritance from her father’s warm brown coloring. Caleb had been entranced when she’d stripped before him, unlined dark skin. Caleb was regularly stained pink by the sun, his skin delicate and prone to burning. Nixa had enjoyed tracing his tan lines, almost as fascinated as he was by her skin.

It wasn’t fair. She didn’t even love him, and he was the first person she mourned.

Maybe it was different with the people who didn’t matter. No, that wasn’t fair. Caleb did matter—to his mother, who had worked on the oyster farm nearly as long as the colony had been there. To his brother, who was away at training for the Alliance fleet. To Nixa Shepard, whose awkward, stilted romance he’d initiated. Maybe to another girl who might have mattered to him, too.

The colony had been rebuilt, sure. But you couldn’t rebuild people.

She’d never be able to see Caleb as he’d been, never be able to forget the smeared trail of blood as he was dragged, unconscious, across the wet sand, toward the crates.

She’d never see her sister again.

* * *

They’d spent the morning on the cloudy beach, filling a bucket with seashells. They rattled like shards of broken glass as Esther tried to carry them home once the alarm sounded.

The ships came soon after, breaking through the clouds with a threatening glower. The ground shook beneath their feet, one rocking jerk after another as the ships landed.

Her hair had fanned out in a wide bounce as she ran after Nixa, their hands linked. She took after their father in that way, her hair crimped tight in full, dark coils.

When they reached home, Nixa’d found half his curls missing, along with the left side of his skull, burnt away in a meaty pulp of blood and flesh.

Their mother was missing.

They weren’t alone in the house. Real, raw fear flashed in Esther’s eyes as alien hands gripped her arm and pulled her away from Nixa, Esther’s fingers leaving bruises around Nixa’s wrist that would last for days after.

They wore gloves. The slavers wore gloves.

Her sister’s hand was sweaty, clammy, when she was pulled away. She screamed Nixa’s name, over and over.

Nixa fought after her until she couldn’t breathe for the force of her struggle against the thick hands locked around her arms. She watched the Batarians take her sister, dragging her by her thick hair. They wound rope tight around her wrists as she struggled, her legs kicking out. A gloved hand pressed some kind of gun against the back of her neck.

The control chip, Nixa realized, as Esther went limp.

Nixa screamed herself hoarse.

Then she got lucky.

One of the Batarians holding her stumbled. Her arm wrenched from his grip. Four eyes blinked in unison, nearly as shocked as Nixa was. She lashed out, her hand wound into a tight fist, her elbows locked, body primed for whatever fight may see her out of this.

A flash of blue burst from her, throwing the slavers back like they were nothing more than rocks on the shore. Shock left her cold, but she knew she couldn’t let it take her; she didn’t have that luxury.

Nixa rolled into the market stalls, her body trembling under a shower of mussels that cut at her bare skin. She bled slowly into a frigid puddle of salt water, holding herself as still as she could.

The crass march of boots followed in a procession before her, one set after another, as the slavers boarded the ships, the limp figures of Nixa’s remaining friends, her neighbors, dragging after them.

The ships shuddered as their engines powered up, and one by one, just as they’d landed, they left.

The bodies of the dead made no sound, and the Batarians left behind none alive.

Except her.

* * *

It took hours for the panic to set in, the realization that her entire world as she knew it was thrown from its moorings. The clouds had begun to clear, shaken loose by the engines of the Batarian cruisers.

In the sunlight, she wandered the boundary of the colony, hearing the heartbeat of the waves, the fluttering of birds’ wings, but nothing, nothing, nothing from the prefabs, from the labs, from the houses erected from hand-hewn lumber.

It was her home, and she felt like the only person alive on the entire planet.

She was surrounded by the dead. They deserved more.

She was one girl, sixteen years old. She couldn’t dig graves for them all. She gathered the bodies together, dragged them until they lay side by side, families and friends clustered.

Only one body was missing. Her father’s body never left their home.

The sun had nearly set before she walked to the communications tower.

* * *

“This is the—the daughter of Lieutenant Marina Shepard from the Natal settlement on Mindoir. I’m transmitting on emergency channels. There’s been a...a raid. Please, help.”

Nixa took a shuddering breath as tears dripped from the tip of her nose.

“I’m the only one left.” The signal cycled for four hours.

* * *

The full story was in the history books. An entire colony under attack, over half a dozen settlements, and one ship had been in range to provide aid.

The response team sent down by the SSV Einstein was easily pinned down on the western continent.

No one gave much thought to a fishing settlement off the coast. The Batarians were counting on it.

By the time the warship retreated, the slave transports were long gone.

* * *

History would recall the captain of the SSV Einstein, who responded to the distress call; it would remember the leader of the Alliance patrol that rescued the girl; and it would never forget Shepard, the lone survivor.

The Communications Officer of the SSV Einstein was never a prestigious position. It was a post like any other, its importance relative.

To Nixa Shepard, he was a hero.

* * *

“Sir, I’m getting a signal on emergency channels. Very weak.”

“Clean it up. Patch it through.”

_ I’m the only one left. _

* * *

“My god.”

* * *

He found Nixa in the Comm Lab, her bloodied legs drawn up under her chin. Her head rest in the nest of her scraped forearms, propped up on her knees, but she wasn’t asleep.

A gun lay beside her, within easy reach. A later inspection would show its safety disengaged.

“Shepard?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m here to help you.”

“You got my message,” she said, blinking slowly with realization. Her voice was slow and cracked with exhaustion.

“Yeah,” the officer said, approaching her slowly. “I got your message.” She curled against the bulkhead like a frightened animal. “I’m David. What’s your name?”

She eyed his outstretched arm for a moment. His hands were dark like her father’s. “Nixa.” She took his hand and pulled herself up. “I’m Nixa Shepard.”

* * *

She wrote the names of everyone she could remember.

Two lists.

One for the dead; one for the missing.

Seventy-three colonists lived in Natal on Mindoir.

For days, she couldn’t figure out why the numbers never added up.

* * *

She’d forgotten herself.

Where did she belong?

* * *

Not dead.

Not missing, but still lost.

Alone.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be a flashback piece in another work, but it got a little out of control.


End file.
